Tijuana Travel Guide, Mexico

Tijuana is a city in Mexico and it is located on the Mexico - U.S. border. It is located next to San Diego, California and its coast faces the Pacific Coast. Tijuana is the municipality and city of Baja California (a state of Mexico). Tijuana has the highest population amongst all the cities of Baja California and it is situated in the deep west of Mexico.

Tijuana has the busiest border of this planet as around 40 million people cross its border every year. Mostly, the inhabitants of California and San Ysidro cross the border of Tijuana regularly. Some of these migrants are tourists while most of them enter Tijuana for business purposes. This started after the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 which helped Tijuana become the industrial hub of Mexico.

Tijuana is called as TJ within California and Tiyei (which matches with the sound that TJ make) within Mexico. Inhabitants of Tijuana are typically called as Tijuanenses. Another name Tijuas has recently become very popular in Tijuana. Locals as well as tourists use this name with the same passion. Recently violence has taken toll in the city and this has given rise to another popular term ‘Yo Tijuaneo, y tu?’ which typically means ‘I Tijuana, and you?’ This newly coined term has become fairly popular amongst the locals and it is being used regularly to curb false criticism.

Río Tijuana (which is the Tijuana River) is a 195 km long river which runs through Tijuana. This river serves the Mexico - U.S. border. Most of the river’s journey is through Mexico while the last eight kilometers flows through the U.S. and it finally ends up in an estuary in United States. Downtown Tijuana faces flood like situations every two months which result from the drain-off which is done by the rest of the city. This happens because downtown is located at the lower end of the river.

Huge numbers of immigrants from the rest of the world have flocked into Tijuana in order to make a living. Huge chunk of Asians live in Mexico and most of them are located in Tijuana itself. Mostly, these are immigrants from China and some percentage from Japan and Korea. Many immigrants from United States have also flocked into the city as they weren’t able to bear the expensive cities of United States. Most of these immigrants are from South California.